I haven't written this pairing in a while so hopefully I've done them justice. A big thanks to H, my beta, who helped turn this into a more polished piece.

Weigh My Body Down

The little churchyard in Godric's Hollow was all but deserted for the evening, with piles of fallen leaves at the bases of headstones and a cool, autumn chill hanging in the air. A flowering mandrake had sprung up from the rough earth near the roots of a yellowing beech tree, and Severus, who was in the churchyard, wandered over to pluck a few of its leaves, examining them between his pale fingers.

The year was 1982, just twelve months after the fall of the Dark Lord and the death of Lily Potter, and Snape had taken to visiting her sometimes. He very rarely slept through an entire night and recently the dreams he had during his few moments of sleep had been horrific. When he closed his eyes it was as if his worst and most insecure fears were pushed to the foreground, beginning with Lily's dead, lifeless face and ending with Voldemort's. The Dark Lord's offer to him rang through his mind at all hours of the day, like a bell-chime that announced the passing of time.

Do you desire her? I need only the boy, Severus. The mother is of little importance to me.

He remembered the sneers and catcalls of his fellow Death Eaters, the haughty stares that had shone through their masks, remembered the voice of Bellatrix Lestrange calling out Mudblood fucker!

But the Dark Lord had been the worst. He had not cared for the jeers and taunts of his subjects, focusing only on Snape.

And what service would you perform for me in return for the girl?

That line always turned his stomach, conjuring the acrid scent of death that he associated with his last assignment for Voldemort. Severus grounded himself in the churchyard, pushing the thoughts of his past misdeeds out of his mind. He began to eat the waxy mandrake leaves, swallowing them one by one until he had consumed what he believed to be a lethal dose.

Lily's headstone stared back at him, clean and white and as closed to him as a book. The effects of the poison were fast-acting, blurring his vision and adding a pearly, dream-like sheen to the world around him.

Severus swayed on his feet, collapsing on the earth that had been turned at her burial merely a year ago. He'd been in Azkaban at the time, in holding before his trial. If there had been a service for Lily and James he hadn't been aware of it.

The world seemed to expand and contract in front of him, as if space and time were adjustable in his affected state. His breathing slowed in his chest, sending sharp needles of pain through his extremities and gathering in his core like the hard pit of a fruit. Severus fought the urge to slip into unconsciousness, focusing on the column of light that was forming in front of him, blurry and indistinct at first but quickly gaining detail.

The pain was almost unbearable now. He would loose consciousness soon from asphyxiation, he was sure of it, but as the glowing figure neared him (for at this point he was sure that it had taken the form of a human being) his discomfort began to edge away, one burning jolt at a time.

"Oh, Sev," a voice said, drawing closer. "They won't let you die like this."

"And what if I want to?" he croaked, his vision clouding even more. The gleam of red hair startled him in its vividness, its color causing an aching in his chest that had nothing to do with his imminent death.

"But it's never been up to you," she said, crouching down and pushing his scraggly black hair out of his eyes. "You're still needed."

"Lily," he said, losing feeling in his hands and feet by the second. "Let me go. This is unbearable. Life is unbearable."

"I'm so sorry," she apologized, taking his hand in her own. Her touch did little to comfort him, as he had already gone numb in his arms and legs. "I can't change anything, but I'll stay with you. I can promise you that."

Any reply he might have said failed to be spoken as a thick, black completeness descended over his eyes. None of his senses remained except for his hearing, which was now muffled and strained, like he was listening to words being spoken underwater.

"It'll be alright, Sev," he heard her say, a disjointed part of his brain processing the sound of her voice. "It's just not your time to go."

He woke up in his chambers at Hogwarts in the same black robes and light cloak he'd been wearing before he had left for the church in Godric's Hollow. His head pounded with a force that rivaled the worst hangover he'd ever experienced and entire body felt achy and stiff.

But he was alive.

Leaves and bits of dried grass clung to his hair and clothes, dispelling any suspicions that last night had simply been a dream. Had he apparated himself back? Not to his bed, perhaps, but to the school gates at the very least. Severus had no memory of returning home, only of eating a fistful of mandrake leaves and having a very poignant hallucination about Lily, neither of which explained how he arrived at his chambers in one piece.

Perhaps Dumbledore had fetched him? Snape wouldn't put it past the aged Headmaster to have some kind of monitoring spell on him at such an early stage in their bargain. It was only his first year as a professor at Hogwarts, and although he had risked his life countless times in the past year on Dumbledore's orders the trust between the two men only stretched so far.

And then he found it—a single long, red hair clinging to the front of his robes, a harbinger from the dead.

He ran to the bathroom and emptied his stomach into the toilet, his mind reeling from the shocking truth: that the Lily who had spoken to him last night had not been a hallucination, that his meddling by her graveside had somehow brought her to the living world, and that she had promised to stay with him.

Severus lowered himself to the cold, tile floor in exhaustion. It was 1982, November 1st, and his life had changed forever.

The "service" that Snape had been ordered to perform for Voldemort had been impossible for him to complete. During his time as a Death Eater the Dark Lord had asked Severus to carry out a number of tasks that could be considered heinous, but none had been as disturbingly personal as his penance for Lily Potter.

He'd been instructed to arrive just after midday, when the sun was at its hottest, at a little, clapboard cottage in a quiet muggle neighborhood. It had been unusually warm for Halloween afternoon and in his thick, black robes the heat was magnified. A bead of sweat inched over Severus's pointed face, angling down the line of his chin as he opened the unlocked garden gate.

Voldemort had already been there, that much was certain after being in the vicinity for only a few moments. The warm, muggy air had an esoteric quality to it that he had grown to associate with dark magic. Snape could do little but follow his orders and enter, knowing that what he would find in the eerily silent house would match the scale of his master's infamous cruelty. He passed a cluster of jutting, magenta amaranth flowers, their simple beauty feeling more dishonest the closer he grew to the garden door.

Severus entered through the kitchen, his movements ringing in his ears like the sharp crash of a gong. At any moment he expected to find Lily's lifeless body or hear the Dark Lord's high, drawling voice before feeling the impact of a curse.

But he held steady. The kitchen bore no signs of violence and Snape could feel the level coolness of experience sinking into his limbs. He breathed deeply and crossed the threshold into the living room.

"Ah, Severus. How good of you to come."

The lofty pitch of his master came from behind him and Snape felt himself sink onto his knees.

"You have given me the honor of requesting a service from me, my Lord," Severus said, steeling his words to sound calm and unaffected.

Voldemort entered his line of vision, looking even more imposing in the light of day than at night. His skin had taken on the appearance of bleached bone, his veins forming blackened fractures in his neck and wrists, like the negative space between connecting joints.

"Yes. It is why I have brought you here today. You see, I am prepared to give you the girl, but you must first prove your loyalties. Follow me."

Voldemort lead him up a carpeted staircase to the upper floor, his robes sweeping behind him in a gesture that Snape had tried to imitate during his adolescence. The Dark Lord entered a bedroom off the main corridor, revealing a trail of blood that was smeared into the white carpet like a signature. Snape stepped into the room and felt his stomach plummet beneath his ankles.

There were seven unconscious women lined up along the far wall, each of them looking like they had been mercilessly brutalized. And all of them were Lily.

"Your Lily is amongst them," Voldemort said.

His tone was calm but Severus knew his master well; the Dark Lord had a great interest in how he would react to such a display, in how close he would let his emotions get to the surface. The sensation of being two people at once suddenly overcame him, and it was as if he had separated to form a thinking self and an acting, speaking self.

Dissociation, his mind flickered, but Voldemort took no notice.

"She will be spared, if you comply. I will ask you to kill any number of these women—perhaps only one, perhaps all the others—and if you succeed then Lily Potter is yours to keep. However, if, for whatever reason, you find yourself . . . incapable of following your orders, then she will die, and you will be unfortunate enough to witness it."

Oh, no. It was beyond cruel. The very nature of the killing curse made what the Dark Lord was ordering beyond his capabilities. The very emotions he would need to feel to deliver a lethal avada kedavra were inaccessible when faced with the woman he was trying to save. His old flashes of jealous, teenaged anger toward her marriage to James Potter were nothing compared to the rage he would need to murder the six other doppelgangers, not that the idea of slaughtering anonymous witches settled lightly on his conscience either.

Severus felt his mind diverge even further, widening the split until he felt two distinct selves in separate corners of his brain. The change brought about a wave of frightened nausea that strongly reminded him of hiding under the kitchen table while his mother cried and his father threw liquor bottles against the walls.

I can't do this. The world in front of Snape seemed to warp and twist in on itself like a pane of glass had been placed in front of him. The space between where he stood and where the line of bloodied redheads began felt so far, like he would never make it to them no matter how far he reached.

I can't—

Voldemort approached him, laying a spidery hand on his shoulder. He fought the urge to shrink away from the Dark Lord's touch.

"Either you will kill her, or I will," he said, his voice just above a whisper.

It was then that the world began to disappear, pinpricks of light burning their way across his eyelids until they were swallowed up by darkness. He saw no more.

"You did the honorable thing."

The Headmaster sat across from him, his silver beard looking distinctly wilted that November morning. Severus could not find it within himself to reply. His head felt as empty and barren as the iced-over landscape that shone through the office window.

"I failed her," he said, silence and bitterness enveloping him like a cloak.

"There was nothing you could have done," Dumbledore said. "Except murder six innocent women, and Lily would never have rested with that knowledge. You know this."

The old man's words held little weight with Severus, mere pebbles when compared to the avalanche of guilt he felt over Lily's death. "I know, Albus. I understand."

It occurred to him that understanding was not enough, or perhaps it was entirely too much. Understanding why Lily had died didn't make him feel any less responsible and it didn't relieve him of his anguish over her death.

Halloween became a difficult time for Severus. Teaching at Hogwarts made the holiday unavoidable, but he acknowledged it with resignation and bitterness. The rest of the wizarding world saw it as the night that Voldemort fell from power, but Snape saw it as the anniversary of his greatest failure.

For two years he grieved for Lily, but as his third year of teaching approached all his old scars began to fade and ebb away. His colleagues didn't seem to notice, but the poisonous hatred and despair that he'd felt toward himself was slowly being displaced. He found himself thinking of Lily in the present tense less and less, resigning to accept her permanent absence.

It had taken him six months to become a Death Eater, but it would take a lifetime before he felt fully absolved.

On the morning of the third Halloween after Lily's death he woke with a pulsing headache. Downing any number of remedies didn't seem to help with the discomfort, and when he showed up at the staff table that morning Severus was sure that he looked even more drawn and peaky than usual.

"Morning, Severus. Have you tried the pumpkin marmalade yet? It's quite delicious."

"No, Headmaster," he said, his eyes heavy against the slate blue sky. The spread of eggs, bacon, kippers, porridge, black pudding, and toast nearly turned his stomach. "I think I'll just be having coffee."

A barn owl carrying the morning Prophet glided over to his seat, dropping the paper on his empty plate. He paid the bird and began flipping through the pages, ignoring the subdued rumble of the students and the cheery talk amongst the members of the staff. Out of the corner of his eye he caught sight of a single, long red hair clinging to the sleeve of his robes. The din of the Great Hall faded to the buzzing of hundreds of bees while a numbness swept over his entire body. Severus dropped his unread paper on the table, letting the gleaming hair curl over the off-white newsprint.

Without looking up, Snape addressed Dumbledore. "Headmaster, I think I'm feeling ill. I'm canceling my classes for the day."

"Of course, if you feel it's necessary," the older wizard agreed. "Some rest would suit you well," he said, offering a look of concern.

Severus rose and exited the Great Hall, a sliver of Lily between his fingers.

The moment he entered his chambers an upwelling of emotions reached him. Severus deposited the red hair on a silver dissection tray, heading for the more neglected bookcase in his office while his stomach clenched painfully.

Severus's mother had been an avid reader her entire life and she had left him scores of books on odd, peripheral types of magic. The volume he was thinking of detailed the workings of necromancy, and perhaps that was what this was. He could think of no other reason that would explain the existence of Lily beyond death; the idea that his hallucination two years ago could had been an actual encounter was more startling that he expected. Was this the past work of Voldemort or some accidental magic of his own?

Snape wasn't familiar enough with that type of magic to be certain, but he remembered hearing about situations like this with other Death Eaters. Occasionally, victims would be reanimated by their own precautionary spells, only to curse the witch or wizard who had murdered them in life. The idea that he could be so directly responsible for Lily's death was horrifying; had Voldemort not been responsible? Had the Dark Lord not had the final say as to how Lily would die? But none of his master's other victims had returned to meddle in the living world, Severus reasoned, so it was possible that Voldemort had enacted some kind of protection from such an event before he was defeated.

All these possibilities swirled around in his head like unformed thoughts, pressing in on his nervous, shaking fingers as he flipped through The Darkest Art in search of an explanation. For a moment Snape thought he felt the ghost of a touch against his hand, like a cold breath of comfort, but it disappeared too quickly for him to be sure. He whipped around and squinted his eyes into the gloomy dungeon, searching for a shift in space that would signal an invisibility cloak or the sound of muffled footsteps. He seemed to be alone.

Just as his eyes returned to the page, a voice said, "You won't find the answer in any of those books."

A tremor of shock surged through him, all pretense of being a big, bad scary Death Eater completely lost. Severus turned wildly, looking for the source of the voice that sounded just like—

Lily. In his office. Looking more alive than himself.

"Hey, Sev. Why don't you join me?" she said, crossing her legs and leaning into the chair next to the empty grate. "We've got loads to catch up on."

He approached her with his heart thumping like mad and his eyes riveted to her solid-looking form. "How are you here?" he asked, taking the vacant chair just next to her.

"By magic of your doing," Lily explained. "I don't think you meant to, but that night two years ago in the cemetery—you tried to trade your soul for mine, whether you intended to or not. You tried to kill yourself at my gravesite but neither of us can be introduced to the other world. Bigger plans are in motion. Although, there is something, depending on whether or not you're inclined . . . "

Severus waited, his eyes black and unflinching.

"I can come back to you every so often, on each third Halloween, as a real woman, with all of a woman's . . . attributes."

A breath of silence as the words sank in, and then, "How long?"

"Excuse me?"

"How long can you stay?" he asked.

"Twenty-four hours," Lily said, piercing him with her gaze. She felt very close all of a sudden, like he was teetering on the edge of a cool waterfall.

Severus leaned over and kissed her, ignoring the awkward placement of their knees and the heady rush of blood to his groin. Her lips were cold but animated, silken and pressed against his own. He pulled her into his lap and leaned back as Lily framed his hips with either of her legs, lowering her center onto the bulge in his trousers while he tugged at her curtains of red hair.

Her body was so cold it felt like he was being burned, like ice was pulsing against his tender skin. Heat flooded his limbs as he pulled her shirt over her head, running his hands over her flawless chest and stomach, the coolness reminding him of a marble statue come to life.

"And your marriage vows?" he asked, inching his fingers beneath her skirt and feeling the soft flesh there.

Lily arched her neck and rolled herself against his touch.

"'Till death do us part," she said, knitting her eyes closed as he eased a finger inside of her. "Ah, Sev."

Snape scooped her up in his arms and stood, balancing both of their weights and carrying her into his bedchamber, releasing a low growl as she sucked on his neck. He felt her hands grazing over the thin trail of hair that disappeared beneath the waistline of his trousers, growing harder the more she toyed with him.

Severus eased her onto the mattress and rolled Lily on top of him, pulling at the hook of her bra with his long fingers while she quickly undid the buttons of his robes, exposing his bare chest and running her cool hands over his skin. She teased his nipples as he sighed with his eyes squeezed shut, holding onto her hips while he ground up into her.

The air was thick and full of fluttering energy, with every sense and motion heightened to savor each detail. Lily's hair between his fingers felt wavy and full, a dark mane that had streaked across his dreams since his teenaged years. Severus remembered being in fourth year and wanking at the thought of her in summer shorts, in her nightgown, in the bath. While she clumsily unfastened his belt and undid the button fly of his trousers he thought about their beginning, as two Hogwarts students, and how they had arrived at this place.

He lifted his hips while she removed the last of his clothing, and the feeling of his prick emerging from beneath the fabric was glorious.

She reached down and took him in her hand, curling up next to him in bed and gliding over him in a smooth, pulling motion. The sensation of her naked chest against his sent rivulets of pleasure down to his groin, where the steady rhythm of Lily's hand lulled him closer to incoherence.

"Remember this," she said, shivering while he dragged his nails over her porcelain back. "You've earned it."

fin